


Sharp Lullaby

by chuusei_teki_na_koe



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Emotional Constipation, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff, Gen, Mild Angst, Sparda family drama, Vergil eats lots of hot dogs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:09:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28260684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chuusei_teki_na_koe/pseuds/chuusei_teki_na_koe
Summary: Nico reeeeally wants to get her hands on the Yamato, just to study it. So with a little bit of low-key arm-twisting, she pressures Nero into asking his father to borrow it.Vergil's answer is, of course, no. Definitely no. Absolutely no.
Relationships: Nero & Vergil (Devil May Cry)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 95





	Sharp Lullaby

The answer Nero received was quite predictable.

“No,” Vergil said, not even looking up from the book he was reading. He was sitting on Dante's beat-up old couch at the Devil May Cry, legs crossed, the Yamato leaning lightly against his thigh. When Nero asked if he could borrow it for a bit, Vergil's left hand lay over the scabbard protectively.

“Just for my next job, come on. I just wanna have fun with it.” Nero attempted to wheedle. That was partly true, but not the real reason. However, Nero wasn't about to tell Vergil the real reason, because he suspected if he brought it up, Vergil would just decapitate him on the spot.

The truth was, Nico wanted to inspect the Yamato.

Nico had an enthusiastic interest in all demonic weapons, and the Yamato had been a longtime interest of hers. The thing that was stopping her from examining it, of course, was that it was attached at all times to an extremely unsociable half-demon who didn't seem interested in doing favors for anyone but himself.

His father still did not raise his eyes from the book. “No.”

Nero sighed. He wouldn't even be doing this if Nico hadn't twisted his arm. Talking to his father in any capacity always ran somewhere in between extremely awkward and slightly terrifying, but like hell if he was going to admit to Nico, _actually, I'm kinda scared to even mention taking that from him—_ she'd be teasing him about it for the next year. He could just imagine it. _“Aww, baby Nero's scared of an ass-whoopin' from daddy? Ya poor thang!”_

But he really had his back against the wall with this one. Nico had showed off some designs to Kyrie for a sort of merry-go-round-like playground device she was going to build at the orphanage in Fortuna, telling her that Nero had already commissioned and paid for it. Kyrie had been absolutely _thrilled_ , talking about how the kids were going to love it, and the kids had heard about it too, and they'd all gotten excited...and there was just one problem. Nero did _not_ have the money to cover what Nico was charging. At all. Not even close.

And so with dread in his heart as Nico gave him a big, smug grin, he'd asked her, “What do you want?”

“I wanna examine the Yamato,” she'd said. “Ask yer daddy for me.”

Which was why he was here.

“Come on,” Nero pushed, shifting his weight and folding his arms, then unfolding them. He didn't want to make it too obvious how nervous he was about this. “It was mine for a while, and I took good care of it.”

“No you didn't.” Eyes still on the book, Vergil turned a page. Was that bastard still reading?

“What are you talking about? I was doing just fine until _you_ came and ripped my arm off,” Nero snapped back at him.

“Exactly,” Vergil replied dispassionately, as if he were talking about breakfast. “I was practically at death's door, and you still couldn't defend it from me.”

Nero immediately flushed hot with shame. He'd already played back that memory in his head about a hundred times, berating himself for letting himself be taken by surprise and overpowered like that. “What? You don't get to criticize _me_ for something _you_ did!”

“It's simply the facts of the matter.” Vergil was _still_ looking at his book, as if Nero was beneath his notice.

Nero snapped. Even knowing he was about to say something he was going to regret, he opened his mouth anyway. “If were gonna talk about _facts_ , then how about _you?_ I think Dante's kinda crazy for even trusting you with that thing, after all the shit you've done. Maybe I should take it away, for everyone's safety.”

That got Vergil to look up from his book. Closing it with a snap, he stood from the couch, sword in hand, and stepped toward Nero with an intimidating smirk. “I'd like to see you try.” And he had that crazy gleam in his eye that Nero had seen about a hundred times in Dante, that gleam that said _yeah, I really would like to see it, let's go._

Unfortunately, that tendency was probably genetic. Nero leaned in, teeth bared. “I kicked your ass once, I can do it again.”

Vergil snorted. “You do realize I let you win?”

“You—” Nero was all ready to get mad, and part of him was mad that his father would say that, but then he choked up halfway, confused. “What?”

The hint of a smile quirked across Vergil's face. His gaze shifted slightly to the left. “I thought it would be better if you did.”

Nero stepped back, the wind knocked out of his sails. “...Oh. Uh-huh.” Unfortunately, given how strong he knew Vergil was, Nero kind of believed it. But it was also a sort of admission on Vergil's part, that he'd wanted Nero to make peace between him and Dante.

Nero folded his arms and looked away awkwardly. “But it still doesn't change...” he muttered, trailing off. He wasn't sure what he was going to say, or even what specifically he was mad about. He was mad about a pretty long list of things, most of which he tried to bite his tongue on, for Kyrie's sake, if no one else. “...that you owe me,” he finished off, lamely. He didn't specify _for what,_ because well, it was kind of for everything.

Vergil turned away from him, walking toward Dante's desk, where the devil-hunter had left a mess of papers, picked up a pen, and started scrawling a note.

“Hey, are you listening to me?” Nero spun around and stalked after him, and Vergil finished his note, then turned back to him.

“You said you had a job? You may use the Yamato, but I'm accompanying you.”

Confused, Nero glanced over at the note on the desk. It read, _out with Nero —V._ “Not much of a note,” he muttered, then looked up again to see his father striding for the door.

“Dante gets antsy when I leave without saying anything.”

“What happens when Dante gets antsy?” Nero asked, rushing after him out the door.

“He gets drunk and hides my belongings to spite me,” Vergil said dryly. “Then pretends I'm the one who misplaced them.”

“How old are you two?”

x x x

It wasn't a big job or anything. Just a little cluster of empusas that had been breeding in an abandoned hut in the forest. They'd been coming in at night to pick off drunks and homeless after dark. But there were added complications.

The complication was not the demon-killing part—that went pretty quick. When they stepped out of the Devil May Cry van at the end of the logging road they'd taken into the forest, Vergil untied the Yamato from his belt, then handed it over to Nero in this weirdly formal way in both hands, saying, “Take care of it,” heavily, as if Nero wasn't just going to borrow it for the evening. He seemed reluctant to let go, holding onto the scabbard for just a moment too long before he relinquished it to Nero.

Vergil making such a big deal about it kind of got Nero nervous about using it. He was used to his good old Red Queen, and he was surprised by how light Yamato was. He took a few experimental swings in the clearing at the end of the road, going through his usual warm-up routine, and when he spun around for the last slash, he saw Vergil standing there watching, arms folded, an unimpressed look on his face.

“What?” Nero lowered the blade, and immediately, Vergil's eyebrow twitched.

“Don't let it touch the ground. Sheathe it. Sheathe it!”

“Huh?” Nero lifted the sword up and looked at it. “Why? It's not like it's going to get scratched like a regular sword—”

“Just do it,” Vergil snapped, a pressure in his voice that made Nero immediately obey, though he had to look at the mouth of the sheath to stick in the sword—he still wasn't used to it. Seeing that made Vergil's eyebrow twitch again.

“I know you're used to sticking that—” Vergil waved at the Red Queen on Nero's back—“glorified motorcycle throttle in the ground to rev it up, but that's not how a proper sword should be treated.”

“Glorified motorcycle throttle?! Hey—”

“And you move too wildly,” Vergil interrupted him. “Openings everywhere. Do you think you can make up for your lack of technique with brute strength?” Nero was about to argue back, but Vergil cut him off again before he could. “Do it like this.” And summoning an energy blade for himself, he went through the same sequence of swings and turns Nero had, except tighter and faster. When he was done, he turned back to Nero and told him, “now you do it.”

Nero had a history of being a bit of a loose canon (understatement), but if there was one area where he knew how to shut up and do what he was told, it was when someone with clearly superior skills was trying to teach him something. You'd never get any better if you were just full of yourself, after all. So he did as Vergil said, doing his best to restrain his impulse to swing forcefully, and to move with more precision.

Vergil, unsurprisingly, was not satisfied, making him do it four more times as he stood there, watching and frowning, until he finally said, “...Acceptable, for now.”

“Ha! See, I can handle it,” Nero crowed when he was done, spinning the Yamato around his wrist, then tossing it up in the air for another spin and catching it.

“...Hmph.” Vergil didn't look impressed by his tricks—he'd probably seen Dante pull far wilder a million times—but that didn't spoil Nero's good mood.

“Thanks for the lesson, Dad,” Nero said, and feeling energized, he ran on into the forest, clapping Vergil's upper arm as he raced past him. He didn't look back, so he didn't know what sort of look Vergil had on his face, but it was probably deadpan as usual, anyway.

x x x

So the complication wasn't the demon-killing part. The complication was that they got really lost, and spent hours wandering around in the forest before they found the nest of empusas, which Nero killed easily while Vergil watched.

By this time, it was dark. And not just slightly dark, city dark—but can't-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face, pitch-black wilderness dark. Of course, either of them could use summoned swords for some mild illumination, but it was still damn dark.

So Nero suggested the obvious. “Let's camp here tonight and go back in the morning.”

Vergil didn't seem so keen on the idea, though. “Why? We can still make our way back in the darkness.”

“And get lost again? No thanks.”

“I remember the way back.”

Nero snorted. “Yeah, right. Who was it who said we should take the left fork?”

“I was right about the left fork. It was the fork after that—”

“Yeah, yeah. Now I think I understand what you were doing in the demon world for twenty years. You were just lost, weren't you?”

“I wasn't _lost_.”

“So then what were you doing?”

Vergil didn't respond to that immediately, and Nero looked toward him, his face lit pale blue under the illumination of the thin sword that floated in the air beside him. Nero half-regretted saying that—he hadn't really been thinking about it. Since Dante and Vergil's return from the underworld, basically nobody had talked about what Vergil had been doing for the past twenty years, least of all the man himself.

But damn it, if anyone had the right to know, it was Nero. So he was gonna dig in. “Well?”

“...Just trying to survive.” His face turned to Nero, shadows hanging eerie over his face. His expression was sober. “The demon world is not a place for humans.”

“You went back, though. With Dante.”

“...I did,” Vergil acknowledged. “But I'm not very human.”

“Seem pretty human to me,” Nero replied without thinking. “...I mean, when you're not all blue and spiky.”

Vergil's lips quirked, but he didn't reply.

“Anyway,” Nero diverted the conversation, he was starting to feel embarrassed—“Sometimes with these nests, there's a straggler or two that's away, and if you camp there, they come back during the night. Better to camp out to make sure we're not missing any. I told Nico we might be all night, anyway.”

“All right,” Vergil agreed surprisingly readily. “But you'll return Yamato to me, first.”

“Huh? Why?”

“You got your entertainment, now give it back.”

The whole point of this had been to wrangle the sword for Nico, but well, maybe Nero could try getting it again in the morning. With a shrug, he untied Yamato from his belt and handed it back to Vergil. Nero wasn't sure if it was his eyes playing tricks on him in the dark, but it seemed as if Vergil's shoulders relaxed slightly when he accepted the sword back.

They didn't really have any stuff for sleeping, but Nero had assumed Vergil was used to sleeping rough, and he apparently was, settling down with his back against a tree, sword over his crossed legs as he closed his eyes. Nero found his own position, lying down over a rock and draping his jacket over himself as a blanket, sticking Red Queen in the ground next to him in that way Vergil apparently thought was crass.

Nero was closing his eyes, just starting to nod off, when he heard a sound.

Slide. _Clink._ Slide. _Clink._ Slide. _Clink._

It took him a moment to realize it was the sound of a sword—Yamato, specifically, being inched out of its sheath and then flicked in again. Nero summoned a tiny blue blade for light as he cracked open an eye to see Vergil sitting on his back with his eyes closed, flicking his sword in and out of its sheath with one hand.

“Do you have to do that?” Nero asked, a little grumpy.

“Isn't it a nice sound?” Vergil said, totally not answering the question. Maybe it was because it was just before sleeping, but his voice sounded more relaxed than normal.

“...It sounds like a sword.”

“Exactly. It's very...satisfying.”

 _Weirdo,_ Nero thought.

“When I was young, I used to play with it,” Vergil said in a nostalgic tone Nero had never heard before. “I would sneak into my father's armory to try using it. When he found out, he'd never punish me for it—he'd just tell me I'm not ready for it yet, but that it would be mine, someday. And he would take it from me and sheathe it before putting it away. And it sounded like this.” _Click._

It was so unusual for Vergil to be forthcoming about himself, and about his father—Sparda, Nero realized, though it was weird to think about the Demon King as his grandfather—the question struck him and was out of his mouth before he could think too hard about it. “What happened to it after, though?” He didn't specify, after _what._ Dante only talked about it in vague terms, but between what he said, letters Nero had gotten from Morrison, and some old newspaper clippings, Nero had basically figured it out.

Vergil seemed to understand, too. “...I got it back,” was all he said, and that was enough for Nero to get it.

After another moment of silence, Nero rolled over. “Well, I'm trying to sleep, so.”

After that, he heard the sound of Vergil standing up and walking a bit further away, and then Nero fell asleep.

x x x

The night passed without incident, and Nero was woken up by the dawn light to find his father was already awake, standing still as a statue with his back to Nero, looking up at the sky.

“You already up?” Nero said with a yawn, running a hand through his short hair as he pulled out his water bottle and took a gulp, then splashed some more water on his face.

Vergil turned back to him slowly. “Yes. It's light enough now. Are you ready to head back?”

Nero stretched, rolling his shoulders and getting the kinks out of his back from sleeping on the ground. “Yeah, I don't think there are any more demons out here. Let's go.”

They didn't get too terribly lost, like they had on the way there, and reached the Devil May Cry van by around mid-morning.

“Heya! Took ya long enough!” Nico said with a yawn, waking up when Nero came up to the van where she'd been sleeping in the reclined front seat, boots up on the dash. Then, seeing Vergil behind Nero, she gave Nero a look and added in a lower voice, “So? Can I...?”

 _Shit._ He'd completely forgotten. And that was apparently obvious on his face, as Nico sighed, then gave him a smug smile before continuing at a conspiratorial whisper, “Look, I got me an idea. Just say ya wanna practice with that thing a bit again, and I'll distract daddy. Then I come 'round to give that sharp lady a looksee, just for a few minutes.”

Nero was highly skeptical about this plan, but what choice did he have? He nodded, then went to Vergil to wheedle for the Yamato for just a few more minutes. Vergil sighed, but relinquished his weapon, and Nero started practicing with it a bit while Vergil watched.

Very quickly, though, their practice was interrupted by a wafting, savory smell. It seemed Nico had built a campfire the previous night, and she'd poked up the embers, pulled some weiners out of the ice box, and was roasting hot dogs.

...Now Nero got what she was planning.

“You boys want hot dogs?” she called, and Nero could see Vergil's attention immediately turn to the fire.

He didn't look it, but Vergil had an immense appetite. Nero had his suspicions about Vergil's dietary history, but his preferences were strictly carnivorous, and he could easily down an eating competition champ's worth of hot dogs without breaking a sweat. Apparently, he also sometimes went long periods without food—so he was like a snake, in other words? Nero didn't want to think too hard about it.

With a few silent eye signals exchanged between Nero and Nico, they got Vergil sitting down on a rock at the campfire with a generous stack of roasted hotdogs (he didn't care for the buns, it was just weiners), while Nero casually put down Yamato inside the van, like it was nothing special, as he came out to the fire to join Vergil, grabbing a couple of hot dogs for himself—these ones with buns, and some ketchup.

Behind Vergil's back, Nico winked at him, then scampered into the van to go inspect the sword she'd been dying to see all this time.

Vergil's attention was fully on the meat. He ate slowly and methodically, yanking one roasting stick out of the ground after another to grab the wieners off them with his teeth, but with an intensity that told you he wasn't stopping anytime soon, and he didn't pause for chit-chat. Seeing Vergil was clearly hungry, Nero went and lay out a few more roasting sticks, roasting out every single wiener in the ice box for Vergil.

Watching him eat, for the first time, Nero noticed the shadows under his eyes. He didn't act much different, so Nero hadn't been able to tell at first, but now that he was thinking about it, it seemed Vergil was tired.

“Did you not sleep last night?” Nero asked him between bites of his second hot dog.

“I don't need very much sleep,” Vergil replied after swallowing. “I can go weeks without.”

Maybe so—Nero wouldn't really put anything past him.

Nero ate his second and third hot dog as slowly as possible—he had room for a fourth, but the point of this was to distract Vergil. His eyes flicked to the van. The doors were closed, and the lights were on, so who knew what Nico was doing in there.

Eventually, Vergil finished all the hot dogs Nico had brought, though, and Nero started thinking maybe he should try harder to distract him with some chit-chat.

“So uh...you ever go out with Dante on jobs?” Nero asked, trying not to sound too awkward.

Swallowing the final hot dog, Vergil replied, “I don't help him with his work. He doesn't need it.”

“So, uh...” _What do you do all the time_ seemed like a weird question. Vergil wasn't even at the Devil May Cry most of the time—he was away a lot, doing God-knows-what off in God-knows-where. But Nero was curious. “So what do you do?”

Vergil wiped his hands on a paper napkin, then tossed it into the fire. “Research.”

“...What sort of research?” Nero asked, suspiciously.

Vergil glared back at him. “None of your concern.”

“Yeah it is, if you're doing the sort of dubious shit you've done before.”

“Dante already knows about it,” Vergil said as he rose to his feet.

“If Dante knows, then can't you tell me?” Nero rose along with him, but Vergil shook his head.

“It's none of your concern.”

“Don't give me that shit!”

But Vergil was already turning back to the van. “Let's go.” And before Nero could stop him, he was opening up the back of the van and coming face-to-face with Nico, at her work bench with her face mask and gear on, tapping the unsheathed Yamato with some kind of weird, gun-looking device.

Vergil looked at Nico.

Nico looked at Vergil.

Then he just silently walked up to the workbench, took the blade and hilt in and hand, and leaned forward slightly to say in an eerily level voice, “Do not touch my sword. Ever.”

Then he sheathed it and sat down at the back of the van, leaning against the wall and closing his eyes.

Eventually, Nico came unfrozen, laughed awkwardly to herself and said, “Hey Nero, you tryin' to start a forest fire? Put that thing out already!” And they put out the fire, piled into the van, and drove back, and nobody said a word about what had just transpired.

x x x

Nobody talked about that incident afterward, but Nero definitely didn't forget about it. And after that, the next few times he saw Vergil at the Devil May Cry, he noticed that Vergil carried the Yamato around with him literally all the time. Every single minute of the day. He had it with him when he was reading or going out, during meals, and he even took it with him when he was going to take a piss.

Nero made a jab at him that time, too, when he, Dante and Vergil were having what was supposed to have been a rare, friendly game of pool—Nero's suggestion, based on Kyrie's idea for family bonding or whatever—and quickly turned into the brothers arguing about the score while Nero stood on the sidelines and sighed.

When Vergil stalked off to go to the bathroom, Nero was so exasperated by that point, he couldn't help but say, “Do you even need to take your sword to go piss?”

Vergil just glared back at him without a word, then slammed through the bathroom door, not quite violently enough to damage the hinges. Taking the Yamato with him.

Dante leaned in to whisper to Nero, “He does, you know. He even sleeps with it.”

Nero gave him an incredulous look. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, one time, I hid it from him as a prank, and he nearly tore the place down.” Dante rolled his eyes. “He's always been weirdly possessive about his stuff, writing his name on everything, like _this is MINE_. He'd throw a fit whenever I borrowed something.” He shook his head with a nostalgic grin on his face. “That thing is like his teddy bear, you know? Every single night, he's clicking the hilt against the sheath, and then he cuddles it when he sleeps.”

Nero couldn't help but snicker at the mental image, but his chuckling faded out quickly. “He does that clicking thing with his sword every night?”

“Yeah,” Dante smiled wryly, leaning one hand against the pool table. “I don't think he can sleep without it. Y'know.” And he mimed a birdie with his hands, then raised his hands in cat paws with a growl. It looked ridiculous, but when Nero got what he meant, it wasn't very funny.

“Hey,” Nero said, figuring he'd ask while he had the chance. “He said he's doing some kind of research, and that you knew about it, but he wouldn't tell me...what is it?”

“Ah, that?” Dante scratched his head. “He probably just doesn't want to get you involved in his bullshit.”

“Hey, it's my bullshit too!” Nero leaned forward, his voice getting louder in spite of himself. “It's _our_ bullshit.”

Dante looked away with a sigh. “...He wanted to stay down there, to try to kill Mundus. I practically tossed him back here against his will. He's still trying to plan revenge.”

That silenced Nero. It wasn't like he could blame Vergil or try to stop him, but—

Thinking about both of his only blood family jumping down into the demon world that time, thinking about Vergil doing that again, felt like a kick in the gut.

“Are you two done?” Vergil said with a scowl, approaching the pool table to pick up a cue. “Let's finish this game already.”

“So eager to make up your loss, huh,” Dante turned to give him a light jab. “I'd have thought a guy who swings swords all the time would be better at handling a stick.”

“I _only_ lost because you were distracting me with your stupid—”

“That's just part of the game, bro.”

As Vergil and Dante devolved into a pointless bickering that was starting to become familiar, Nero leaned back against the wall and heaved a long sigh, his eyes wandering to the sword at Vergil's hip.

x x x

“Hey, Nero.”

It was the end of a long night, and Nico was prodding him in the back, shoving a little hand-sized box at him.

“Huh? Is this a present? Since when do you give me anything for free?” Nero said, trying to take the box, but Nico snatched it out of his hands.

“Don't open it! It ain't for you. It's for yer daddy. A little apology for trickin' him to get my hands on his sword. He seemed real upset about that.”

Nero wasn't sure he'd describe Vergil's attitude after that as “real upset”—more like, “restrained murderous intent,” but maybe Nico didn't see it like that.

“Oh, okay. Thanks, Nico. I'll give it to him, next time I see him.”

“Yeah, I'd give it to him myself, but I'm kinda worried he might lop my head off, aha-ha-ha!” she said with a bright grin. Nero was constantly impressed that Nico could be absolutely cool in the face of situations like these, considering she had absolutely no ability to defend herself from demons. Or grumpy half-demons.

So the next time Nero happened to see Vergil at the Devil May Cry, he handed him the box, saying it was from Nico. “She says sorry.”

“Hmm?” Vergil seemed surprised, then opened up the box.

Inside was a pair of blue tassels. Vergil picked up one, inspecting it curiously, so Nero explained, “she said they're joined. So like, one end can always summon the other. You can use them for whatever you want. ...But not people,” he added hurriedly. “Keep it to inanimate objects. I'm absolutely supposed to tell you that part.”

Vergil closed the box, then tucked it away inside his jacket. “Give her my thanks,” he replied.

“...I'm sorry, too,” Nero added after a moment of hesitation. “I should've just told you Nico wanted to see it. I just kinda assumed you'd kick my ass.”

Vergil didn't reply, so Nero didn't say anything more about it, either. Soon after that, though, Nero saw one tassel on the hilt of the Yamato, and the other on Vergil's belt.

x x x

It was one of the nights when Trish and Virgil were in at the Devil May Cry along with Dante when Nero popped in, which only meant one thing: drinking contests.

Drinking with Trish and Dante was always bad news. Their alcohol tolerance was absolutely inhuman, and Vergil, though unpracticed, was doggedly determined to keep up. Nero had learned the hard way that trying to compete in this arena led to blacking out, so he just sat down at the table with them and watched the show as the other three downed shot after shot of hard liquor and mocked each other for being unable to take it.

When Vergil swayed after the umpteenth shot, Dante smacked the table and belted out loud, drunk laughter. “You're out! You're out, Vergil! You can't even sit straight!”

Vergil, of course, being Vergil, surged out of his seat, knocking his chair over, and drew his sword, pointing it at Dante, swaying rather a lot as he did so. “I'm sober enough,” he shot back, only slightly slurred. “Sober enough to...kick your ass.”

Nero had found out that Vergil got rather more vulgar when he was drunk, and it was kind of funny to watch.

Dante grabbed the Yamato by the blade and shoved—the hilt thrust into the middle of Vergil's sternum, and he fell straight down on his ass, where Dante and Trish laughed at him, both of them smacking the table in an annoying, drunk way.

Scowling, Vergil flicked the blood from Dante's hand off his blade, then sheathed it with remarkable dexterity for a drunk man, grabbing the table to pull himself up again. “I'm above this,” he said out loud, as if he were talking to himself. “I'm above this absolutely idiotic competition of drunkenness.” Trish and Dante just howled with laughter, and Nero couldn't help snickering at him, too.

Vergil glared at them all for a moment, then leaned against the table for another moment before announcing, “I'm going to go relieve myself,” then staggering off toward the bathroom.

He left the Yamato on the table, though.

“Hey bro, forgot your sword!” Dante called after him.

But Vergil just waved a hand as he staggered off. “'Sfine. Nero'll take care of it for me.” Then there was the slam of the washroom door.

After a moment's pause, Nero leaned forward to slide the sword over the table towards himself. “Gotta protect Yamato from you drunks,” he said, bringing it into his lap with a grin.

The hilt of the sword was still warm from his father's grip.


End file.
